Camus, a Romance
“A beautiful memoir of a life-long obsession, a peek behind the curtains at the biographer’s art, and, not least, a rich and vivid portrait of Camus himself.”
—Benjamin Moser, Harper’s Magazine
Reviews of Camus, a Romance
A stranger, no more
“Hawes's accomplishment in Camus, a Romance is to get behind the limiting popular perception to disclose both the complexity of the man and the fluctuating trajectory of his career and reputation.”
Stalking the Stranger
“It was with great pleasure, then, that I read Elizabeth Hawes’s brand-new, Camus, a Romance... In many ways Albert Camus is the perfect literary crush.”
Camus, A Romance by Elizabeth Hawes
“What Hawes does brilliantly is bring to life Camus the human being: the charming friend, the seductive womanizer, the lifelong outsider ‘from somewhere else.’”
“A beautiful memoir of a life-long obsession, a peek behind the curtains at the biographer’s art, and, not least, a rich and vivid portrait of Camus himself.”
“What a wonderful adventure this book is! A biography. An autobiography. The history of an obsession. It is our very good fortune that Elizabeth Hawes’ dream of Camus turned into a conversation with his books, his letters, and the people who shared his life—and most of all into a determination to pierce his equal determination to elude her.”
“Elizabeth Hawes’s love for Camus begins as she writes her senior thesis about him; years later she has given us this vivid portrait. Hawes, a former staffer at The New Yorker, presents in fresh detail his relations with his American editor, his life as a literary celebrity, his modesty and rectitude, his devastating illness and much more. Camus, A Romance is eye-opening and a huge pleasure to read.”
“Camus, A Romance is a most tender book, at once biography and autobiography. Elizabeth Hawes brings the great writer (and his legion of friends and lovers) alive in unexpected ways, from his boyhood in Algeria through the war and his years as a Resistant, to his titanic struggle with Jean-Paul Sartre and the thought that brought him such derision in France: I love justice but I also love my mother. Camus once described an intellectual as someone whose mind watches itself. This fine book achieves something like that and as such is a gem.”
“Elizabeth Hawes takes us on a remarkable, deeply personal journey of discovery—about Camus himself, the nature of biographical inquiry, and her own four-decade fantasy romance with this elusive, solitary figure. With tremendous sensitivity and reportorial skill, Hawes beautifully ‘reads’ Camus the writer and the man in her radiant portrait-memoir.”
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About Elizabeth Hawes
Elizabeth Hawes (also known as Betsy Hawes Weinstock) is the author of New York, New York, How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City, 1869-1930. A former staff member and contributor to The New Yorker, she has written for The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Nation and numerous other publications. She also wrote Martha Stewart's best selling books Entertaining and Weddings.
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